Guilt and Sand
by Dreaming of Everything
Summary: Gaara and Lee. In a romantic relationship. Slash. Guilt is a hard thing to deal with, and ninja have more than their fair share. Quote: When they kiss, Gaara's sand hovers around them... Now with prequel!
1. Chapter 1

**Guilt and Sand**

**By Dreaming of Everything**

**Disclaimer**: Naruto is not mine. This idea (and the fic produced) is.

**Author's Notes and/or Warnings:** This is a one-shot, meaning that there will be no second chapter. The featured pairing is Gaara/Lee (or Lee/Gaara, doesn't particularly matter in this fic...) so please don't read if you have a problem with slash, or with the pairing beyond that. As always, please read and review—feedback of any sort is spectacular, but constructive criticism will make me deliriously happy for weeks.

When they kiss, Gaara's sand hovers around as if it wants to touch Lee, wanting and resistant and waiting. Gaara never allows it to, even when his breathing grows heavy and desire hoods is eyes and the sand is nearly frantic around them, slithering over and around Gaara but always at least a foot away from Lee, a sharp-edged barrier matched to the contours of his body.

And one day Lee takes the time to ask, breaking from their kiss and asking why Gaara never lets it touch his skin, surrounds himself with it, constantly and forever, but never lets any touch him.

Because it is his guilt, says Gaara. It is what he kills with, and what he has used to kill in the past, when he had no reason to live at all, had no precious people, had nothing. The sand is what he nearly killed Lee with, what nearly destroyed Lee's soul with, when his body was so badly maimed, with only a scant percentage to pin his hopes to, in the surgery a chance he'd never move again, but without it no hope to ever fight. He nearly broke Lee, as effectively as his village had broken him. His sand is coated in chakra and blood, and only the chakra is his. He doesn't know how many people's remains have soaked into his sand, the only remaining reminder of who they once were.

And Lee knows that he has killed people as well, and he uses his hands—his feet, his arms, his torso, his legs, his head and wrists and eyes and bones and shoulders and knees and muscle, his body—to do it. He is as bloody as Gaara's sands, and has nothing else to touch Gaara with. He is a ninja, a professional killer.

Still he touches Gaara, still wraps his arms around him and presses against him and pulls him close so he can smell the dry-desert, too-human scent of him. He is happy and sometimes relieved on the rare times when Gaara embraces him instead, when he is the one who pulled close instead of the one pulling, but Gaara never touches him with his sand, because of guilt and because it's hard for Gaara to imagine that his sins are no worse than Lee's.

When Lee protests again and Gaara says that touching Lee with his sand would be like pressing a kunai to his skin, even gently, like wrapping his arms in explosive tags, even if they never go off, Lee silently disagrees. His body is as much a weapon as shuriken or senbon needles, but it is still just that—his body. He is more Lee than weapon, and sometimes he is human first and shinobi second, and he has learned to accept himself. He has never killed as Gaara has, with no reason other having no reason, but he has killed, and sometimes killed good people for no other reason than someone had paid to have them removed.

Lee knows Gaara's sand is an extension of his body, knows that it can touch, can feel. Not pain or pleasure, or cold-smooth-sticky-warm-soft-hot-oily-hard, as skin does, but an alien sense of something being _there_, a sense of other. He knows that it is as natural as breathing for Gaara, a constant presence, and that if he were to lose it he would be half-blind, continually off-balance. He knows that Gaara has always had his sand.

One night when he is nearly passing out from exhaustion, reeling as he stands and nearly to tired to fully open his eyes, his body beaten to hell and back and every inch cut and bruised and scraped and raw, he finds himself in Gaara's house, probably because it was closer than his own apartment, though he's not sure if he was taken there by Gaara, or walked there himself. He thinks that Gaara is startled to see him so torn up—his sand is not infallible, but it keeps most opponents from ever landing a blow. He is not used to seeing the wounds and abrasions fighting causes others on those he cares for.

He's already been bandaged up and checked for potentially harmful wounds, and some part of him is glad that Gaara didn't see him before, covered in his own blood and his opponents' blood and mud that had been dry dust until it was mixed with blood. That part of him still wants Gaara to think of him (and worries that he won't if he really begins to understand) as someone worth knowing, someone who isn't flawed as he is, as he thinks he is, and that part worries that Gaara would turn away in disgust at being touched by him, just as he hates the idea of touching Lee with his sand, and that shameful part of him roils his stomach, leaving a sour taste in the back of his throat and dampening his eternal fire.

A bigger part of him, though, wants Gaara to understand. Lee thinks he might love Gaara, knows he does, but _love_ is a hard word, a hard thing to say, when it matters, and he's never wanted to be put on a pedestal, made somehow better than Gaara is, be viewed as someone, something, he isn't. Gaara is one of Lee's precious people, and he thinks he is one of Gaara's, and he wants Gaara to treat himself that way. Their respect is mutual, and some days it feels as if Gaara has forgotten that. Other days it feels as if he never knew.

So as Lee is sitting in Gaara's kitchen, clutching a mug of tea in shaky hands, he talks of his mission, and the ones that came before it. Assassinations, reconnaissance, recovery, guard duties, but mostly the assassinations—the people he has killed, the people he has been forced to kill. It all comes tumbling out in a guilt-ridden flood, his expression shock-blank and heavy with exhaustion.

Gaara understands, at least a little. Begins to see.

The next time they kiss, when Lee has rested and recovered and they have found a private enough place, Lee softly places a scarred and calloused and weathered hand against Gaara's cheek, a wordless reminder of what has been alluded to and what has never been said, and he thinks he almost feels a brush of sand against his arm, but he does not break the kiss, and does not say a word, and next time he's positive it happened.

When the two of them make love for the first time, Lee can feel shifting sand over his back and shoulders and arms, his lowers legs, carefully directed beyond even their norm semi-conscious control. It never approaches his face, never threatens to cut off his breathing, and stays away from where he and Gaara are touching, from where it might get in the way. It never presses on him, never covers him, never makes him feel as if he's being captured, controlled, forced, and he feels Gaara's nervous, loving, anxious, fierce worry in the gesture, and that is the most reassuring of all.

Lee kisses back and touches back, arms and legs and torsos pressed against each other and tangled up in each other, and rivers of sand slide over them both, and he feels safer and purer like this than he ever has, as if this has finally brought the Lotus of Konoha out of the battle-field mud he came from, (1) and he knows that he is a weapon, and Gaara is a weapon, but that is not all they are, and nearly anything, no matter how harmless, can kill someone if used wrong and both are learning to move beyond.

Gaara still worries about touching Lee with his sand, and Lee still worries about touching Gaara, and both have hurt the other before, one with his body and one with his sand. They are human, so it's unlikely they will ever stop worrying, but they still touch, body to body to sand, despite that. Gaara no longer fights to continuously deny one of his primary senses, and Lee no longer worries about Gaara controlling that part of himself, and maybe it's as close to a happy ending as ninja, as killers, as sinners, will ever get.

(1) Lotus (Lotuses? What exactly _is_ the plural of 'lotus'?) are sacred in Buddhist mythology because they rise out of river mud and scum, blooming above it in a sign of purity. I would love to see a fic on this and how it relates to Lee, hint hint.

--**End**--


	2. Chapter 2

**Guilt and Sand  
****Part Two  
**By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Naruto, or any of the characters, settings or events portrayed in it.

**Author's Notes:**

1. This is actually a prequel to the previous ficbit, meaning that it takes place BEFORE the first half of this fic. At this point, nothing you have previously read has taken place.

2. I've done my best to keep the style consistent between the two pieces, but I was in a _very_ odd sort of writing-mood when the first part came to me, so there's no guarantee.

3. This is basically TWT. (Timeline? What Timeline? that is.)

4. Please read and review! I don't bite and I will love you forever for it.

**Dedication**: This is dedicated first and foremost to my two flamers (the first two reviews for the story ever, actually) for getting me several more reviews than I otherwise would have gotten, and for reaffirming my belief that I'm not actually the most stupid person out there. Know that **you two** (or one; I'm pretty sure you're a troll and a sock puppet) are the inspiration for this piece.

Secondly, this is dedicated to everyone who offered me support about the flames, and to everyone who reviewed.

oOoOoOo

Gaara knows that Lee doesn't like to touch him.

Some days he wonders why. _Why me? Why doesn't he touch me?_ because they've spoken of precious people, and of love, and he knows how much he has changed when that word doesn't hurt the way it used to—

But Lee does not touch him. He sits close to him, when they are alone, so close that Gaara can feel the force of Lee, his presence, the force of his life, even though he can't emit chakra at all, certainly not the way Gaara does. So close that he can feel his presence tingling, shivering along his skin, disturbing and intimate (_like a fight but still, motionless, closer than anyone has ever gotten to him by their own free will, and peaceful, at rest, trusting, and the sand that filled the air around him was close enough to kill, his guard down and his reflexes slowed and _so close—) but not touching.

Lee doesn't shy away from touching his teachers, his teammates, his friends—Naruto, Sakura, Neji, Tenten, Maito Gai, whoever he is training with, even Gaara's siblings. Casual touches, the natural, relaxed movements: greetings, reassurances, blocks, blows and steadying hands that Gaara doesn't give, isn't offered. They come so naturally to Lee, who is a physical person by nature, and human in a way that Gaara isn't, that Gaara can't be, and he gives away those little touches and reassurances to everyone he knows, except to Gaara.

Because Gaara is a monster, and nobody has wanted to touch him, nobody has tried touched him except for assassins since, since Yashamaru, and nobody has touched him since then. At least, until the Chuunin exam when Lee inflicted the first (physical) pain he could ever remember feeling, when the Uchiha heir kept him from a full transformation, when he was carried by Temari and Kankurou, when he nearly killed Sakura and was defeated by Naruto. Now, people avoid him, he always has an empty space surrounding him, no matter how packed a crowd, and only Naruto will fling an arm around him as if they are friends, as if he is human, as if he is worth it, and sometimes Temari and Kankurou will cautiously hold a hand against his shoulder, his arm, ready to spring away, to let go, to run if he reacts badly, and they are willing to do it anyways, despite that, but nobody else will touch him.

Not Sakura, Naruto's precious Sakura-chan, Lee's respected Sakura-san, whom he nearly killed, years back. Not the people of the village, who fear him and respect him and nearly worship him. Not the Uchiha that Naruto and Sakura had refused to give up on. Not any teacher he's ever had. Not— Not Lee, who says he loves him, who says that Gaara is his most precious person, that he matters more than anyone, anything else.

It makes him want to kill him, sometimes.

Sometimes, Gaara hates him for it. Could tear him limb from limb, or tear away layers of skin and then muscle and then bones until only sand is left, or crush him into a gory rain of now-unrecognizable pulp that doesn't hurt him, can't hurt him, the way the alive Lee does, on accident. But he hasn't, and he won't, and he's not sure he can, because he almost killed Lee once, nearly crushed him to death, caught his leg and his spine instead of all of him, and he will never forget what it felt like, the night after he killed Kimimaro, after he had seen Lee again, for the first time since he had taken so much, so much, away from him: the relief and the pain, knowing that _it might not have worked and I might have killed him, that trust and belief in me, in _me_, no matter who I am and what I've done_—

And Lee kept on doing that, believing in him, enough to love him but not enough to touch. Trust, but still the quiet, subtle, unspoken disgust that showed in his actions, a refusal to accept his pale, unblemished skin, unmarked with the scars a shinobi should have, always had, except for him, and for Naruto, but Naruto had never killed like he had.

And Gaara didn't want to force Lee to pollute himself by touching him, as if his sins, the blood on his sand, the sand itself, would rub off on Lee, make him the same as himself. He might wish for that touch, but knows that he's not worth it, that he'll only hurt him more in the end, **contaminate** him, and he won't do that to Lee.

He doesn't even know if this is normal. He suspects it isn't, from what he's observed, but he doesn't know. He can't be sure. He knows he's not normal, not normal when it comes to anything, but especially interacting with people.

Gaara can't bring himself to talk to Lee about it, because it'll just make Lee feel like he's hurting him, make him feel he's forced to touch him.

He deserves no one.

Not Lee, Lee least of all, who needs someone who will help raise him higher. Someone who will make him happy. Someone who doesn't disgust him. Someone he can touch.

oOo

Lee's nearly unconscious, barely in touch with reality from the heavy painkiller he's been given (against his will) to combat the pain the huge gash that's been ripped into his side when he touches Gaara.

Gaara is the last one to leave the room he's in, standing to leave and looking down at him. He thinks Lee's asleep, unconscious, but his eyes flutter open and hand moves deceptively fast to brush against his cheek and stay there, the back of his hand brushing against it, gaze bleary.

"Hello, Gaara."

He doesn't respond, too shocked.

"I—I wanted to—

"Thank you for letting me touch you. I know you don't like it."

He's blatantly matter-of-fact about the bit of misinformation. Gaara absorbs it, has to think for a second longer than he should have to before the meaning penetrates his mind.

"But I don't mind," he says.

Lee blinks. "Oh. I must be dreaming—No one ever touches you. You don't like it." He treats it like a fact, regardless of Gaara's disagreement.

Before Gaara can say anything else, Lee is gone.

oOo

Gaara doesn't leave the hospital room until Lee's regained consciousness. Nobody says a word about it—except for Naruto, who teases him about it until Gaara is ready to kill him, though he won't.

oOo

Gaara doesn't mention anything once Lee regains consciousness, and after he's discharged from the hospital, and afterwards. Lee has no memory of the event.

oOo

Lee hates himself. Not all the time, because he has teachers and friends who love him, who know differently, and because he's a sensible person, when all's said and done, but he still hates himself, some days.

He's never assigned to the worst missions, because personality is a factor when duties are assigned, but he is still a high-level, effective ninja with a specialized fighting style particularly effective in many of the missions the village is hired out for, and they are shinobi. There is nothing inherently noble about their jobs. They forge a living out of death, and his own values have very little to do with it. Even if what they do is usually done to keep some measure of control over the country, there are innocent lives lost: passers-by caught in a battle between ninja, someone in the way of an objective, or some innocent who, by some series of accidents and coincidences, became important in the wrong ways to the wrong people.

And Lee hates himself, when he's just killed someone who walked in at the wrong time, or he's been assigned to assassinate someone or, worse, someone and their family, or when he doesn't incapacitate a ninja gone rogue fast enough, and more people are killed, _more people_ are _killed_.

Lee knows that Gaara hates himself, if not how much or to what extent or how often. Every ninja does, sometimes, except for the sociopaths, the crazy ones, the ones who relish every crime they commit under the protection of their hidden village—even in Leaf, known for being the most kind-hearted—and sometimes even then, Lee doesn't know. The most indulgent of humanity.

But he knows enough to know that Gaara hates himself _differently_.

The killings, the assassinations—they don't bother him the way they bother most other people. And that scares Lee, sometimes, because he remembers Gaara when he didn't reign himself in, when he really didn't care at all, except for the _proof of existence_ it offered him.

Lee knows enough to know that Gaara hates himself because he thinks he isn't human. Because, in a way, he isn't. The killing is secondary, maybe even tertiary, because he hates himself for what he was before, too, and that is the most overwhelming fear, the most overwhelming hate, but not the main reason he hates himself, now, because he's too focused on the present.

And it's funny, Lee knows, that Gaara differentiates between the killings he did _before_, and the killings he does now. Because a death's a death, right? But the _before_ ones are also everything that he was then, which is mostly all alone. Before, he was all alone. So he killed to prove who he was. Now, he protects, and he chooses who he protects, and he kills to protect them, whether what he's killing is a threat, or for money, or merely to keep his village in favor with the lords of the Fire Country. And so Gaara hates himself first and foremost for what he is and what he was, and then he hates himself for the killings he had done, the past ones, and only then he hates himself for the now-killings.

Lee knows a lot, but he doesn't know it all. He can't, really, because he can't understand what it was like to be Gaara before he had something to care for. Before he had people who cared for him. Because before, he was all alone.

Mostly, Lee can only guess. Informed guesses, sure, but it's hard to tell what questions can set Gaara off—which makes the direct approach pretty impossible, and Lee knows that Gaara couldn't deal with himself if he lost control enough to attack someone he loved—which mostly leaves Lee with the reactions of everyone else to base his interactions with him around.

And nobody touches Gaara.

oOo

Nobody touches Gaara, but it's hard for Lee to keep on remembering that. They sit by each other, some evenings, Gaara as quiet as he always is and Lee sometimes talking and sometimes quiet—it's nice to just sit and be silent, sometimes—and he wants to lean into him, so he can feel rough-smooth compacted sand, or sometimes skin, on the days when Gaara is calm enough or needing enough or it's been long enough. Lee wants to brush an arm against him in reassurance when he's stumbling through interactions with the villagers, still acting as Kazekage but in no official way, and Gaara's gotten so much better, but he still doesn't know how to respond, sometimes, and he never quite trusts himself.

And sometimes, Lee just wants to hug Gaara, walk up to him and wrap his arms around him, because he's sinned and Gaara's sinned and because he needs it and Gaara needs it and because there's nobody else willing to.

But he holds himself back, because he's not sure he wants to touch Gaara with hands that have touched people in nearly the same ways, but to kill, and he can't do that to Gaara, to him most of all, because nobody else has touched him before, not with kindness—with love. Not regularly, certainly. Not casually, or whole-heartedly, or without doubt. Without fear.

And he knows that Gaara probably doesn't like to be touched; Lee would like it, certainly, dreams of and craves both sexual touches—kissing and sometimes more, when he's asleep or half-asleep or, in a few specific cases, drunk or under a jutsu—but also just _touching_: arms brushing as they walk, a body pressing sideways against another as they sit, a hug. A hand held up to a cheek.

oOo

Life continues, and Lee comes home exhausted one day, after weeks out on missions, half way to starving because it's so _hard_ to get the kind of energy his body needs out on stealth missions without getting caught, and tired from almost no sleep and nearly delirious from the fever he caught while he was crouching in a swamp for weeks without proper food or rest.

Gaara had crept into the apartment Lee lived in when he was in Suna, knowing that he was due back from his assignment, routine patrol. It was slightly unusual but not alarming that he hadn't checked in before returning home; the unspoken agreement was that Gaara would make sure that everything was alright when that happened. Lee obeyed Gaara's silent need for aloneness, separateness, and only looked in the places Gaara commonly was, when he wanted him: his office and his favorite park, the government workers' cafeteria he usually ate at, but not his home, the desert haunts he habituated, where he didn't need to reign himself in, act as human as he was able, for the sake of the village.

So Gaara comes to check up on him, and finds Lee asleep on the floor, sprawled there with blankets he seemed to have dragged off of the bed.

Gaara doesn't sleep, and he doesn't understand people, doesn't understand _Lee_, so he ignores _why_ he's there, but he knows that it isn't comfortable, and that's why people have beds; he had asked Yashamaru that, long ago. He trusts the answer, somewhat. It's one of the ones that makes sense, has other evidence to back it up.

He stoops to gather up Lee, the sand assisting almost without his thought; he's stronger enough to manage it on his own—he is a shinobi, even if he doesn't specialize in taijutsu like Lee does—but it makes it easier, so he doesn't will it away.

Lee clings to him, and it takes effort not to react—not to run, not to force him away, even not to attack, no matter how important Lee is. No matter how much he matters.

He lifts Lee to the bed and tries to set him down, but he's still holding onto him, like a trusting child—it hurts Gaara, the same sharp pain in his chest he can remember from when he was a child. It has lessened, since then—because of Naruto, his siblings, his village, Lee.

He tries to lift his hands off of him, but Lee is strong. Gaara knows how strong. His grip isn't quite hard enough to bruise, but close. Gaara can't bring himself to hurt him—not ever, but especially not like this, unconscious and trusting, with only an instinct that clearly trusts Gaara, despite his monster, to guide and guard him.

He's trying to convince him to let go when Lee wakes up.

"Wha—?"

Gaara runs.

oOo

Gaara runs, so Lee runs after him—not well, because he's barely woken-up and still hungry and still fevered. When Gaara notices, he's torn; eventually he stops, but Lee's falling anyways.

Gaara barely manages to catch him, just before the ground breaks his fall.

"You're… Touching me," Lee says, a note of surprise in his voice.

"I—won't. Again."

"No, I don't _mind_," says Lee, honest surprise in his voice.

Gaara looks up to meet his eyes, the cramps of _hurt_, of _loneliness_, _pain_, slowly fading.

"Oh," he says.

Lee smiles tiredly, then goes back to sleep in his arms.

—end—

(For real, this time!)


End file.
